A reader's question: Is relationship selling really a good approach for my publication? I don't see it.

By William Dunkerley

Q. I've followed with interest your articles about advertising sales. That's something really important to us now. The pandemic really threw us a curveball. We were doing okay before it hit. Not great, but okay. In the last issue you started pushing relationship selling. I don't see how we could possibly put that to work here. We're a moderately sized B2B magazine. The good thing about our advertising is that there are lots of companies that want to sell products to our readers. A few are big companies. But we have a ton of little guys that place small ads. Our sales guys couldn't possibly spend time building close relationships with all of them. One of our competitors has a couple of smooth operators selling its ads. It's like they charm their way into a sale. My sales team doesn't have the same kind of personalities. Should I try to get them trained? Should I try getting some new blood for selling our ads? What do you advise?

A. Don't fire your ad staff yet! Extensive relationship selling is not always the best fit for a particular publication. In fact, it has some real drawbacks in some cases.

Close relationships built over time can be an important asset to advertisers if they consider spending for an ad or a contract with you to be a big buy, or if it represents a large chunk of their ad budget. The picture you paint sounds different from that.

You said you have a few big advertisers. It certainly might pay off for your salespeople on those accounts to spend extra time with them. As you suspect, though, it will be impossible to do that with a large number of small advertisers. Feature-benefit selling is probably the best approach for them. We'll deal with techniques your staff can use in a later issue.

Several possible problems can arise from relying upon the relationship between that sales rep and the advertiser. It's important to consider those potential issues, as they apply especially to the kind of sales techniques you say your competitor is using.

Once I worked with a small B2B publisher that had just one salesperson. Her name was Francine. She had a very warm and engaging personality. She had advertisers thinking that they were best friends after just a few telephone conversations. They didn't just talk about advertising; she had them talking about their personal lives and interests. She shared hers with them too. I think the advertisers looked forward to a sales call from her as if they were hearing from a good buddy. It was impressive. It was effective.

The problem came when Francine left for a job in the hospitality industry. What was the problem? When she left, so did many of the ad sales she had generated. Apparently those advertisers were buying specifically because of Francine.

That magazine had a few close competitors. Francine had provided this magazine with an edge over them, and now the magazine had lost that edge. Advertisers reevaluated where they were spending their money. Many of them went to competitors with much of their spending.

There's another problem with the Francine-type salesperson: That person might eventually come to recognize her or his unique value to the magazine. This could result in demands for a larger percentage of the revenues as compensation.

I've seen magazines that ended up paying inordinate sales salaries or commissions in situations like that. In some cases these salespeople use their perceived essential status to demand editorial changes that might further boost their sales. Capitulating to such demands can be very shortsighted for the magazine, though. That's because the changes may not be in the interests of the readers -- and that could wreak havoc on reader satisfaction and renewal rates.

So, in short, I agree that extensive relationship selling may not be right for your publication. Stay tuned for a discussion of feature-benefit selling in a future issue.

William Dunkerley is principal of William Dunkerley Publishing Consultants, www.publishinghelp.com.

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